


Pyro Pickles

by the_eighth_sin



Category: Hockey RPF
Genre: AU - Farm/Ranch, Crack, Jam farm, M/M, That's not a euphemism, The adventures of reporter Sean and Bollig the Jam and Pickle man
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-19
Updated: 2016-02-19
Packaged: 2018-05-21 15:43:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,584
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6057106
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/the_eighth_sin/pseuds/the_eighth_sin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sean is a reporter who has been sent to write a piece on Pyro Pickles, one of the biggest indie producers of jam and pickles in Alberta. Brandon Bollig is the guy he thinks is a serial killer. They probably live happily ever after.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Pyro Pickles

**Author's Note:**

> So this was written for one of my assignments for uni, which is why everything is sort of general and I had to be careful about names, but once the concept came to me, I couldn't NOT write it for my class. 
> 
> In case anybody was wondering, I got a First for this.
> 
> I hate myself.

The train ride is long and quiet. Sean reads through the file he was given again, makes sure he has all the names of the main players memorised. He drinks too hot coffee and eats a tasteless protein bar and tries to get some sleep. He never sleeps very well when he's on assignment. 

He's the only person who gets off at Ilberton and if he was more paranoid he'd probably think the ripple of murmuring that goes through the carriage has something to do with that. 

The station is deserted; a dusting of snow on the ground, the shadow of the hills that frame the town making everything look gloomy. Sean sighs and pulls out his phone, jotting down a few notes before his taxi pulls up. He's shivering, even in the bulky coat he bought in preparation for this trip out to the wilds of Alberta. The taxi driver grunts once when Sean confirms the address of his hotel, and they arrive less than 15 minutes later.

They pull up in front of a squat, ugly looking building. The gate out front is stiff with rust and, when Sean gets closer realises that it's less of a hotel and more of a guesthouse crossed with a B&B. It starts snowing again as Sean steps inside, and the woman who greets him is stout and angry looking. She shows him to his room with barely a word, deposits him there with his bags and a big brassy key and a ‘Welcome to Ilberton’ that sounds like it hurt to say. Her voice is low and gravelly and the whole place makes Sean wary.

He locks the door behind him when he steps inside, tucking the key into his back pocket. 

“Better safe than sorry,” he mutters quietly, looking around at the yellowing curtains and tobacco stained wallpaper. The bed, at least, is clean when he pulls back the sheets. It’s still early enough that, were he back home in Calgary, he’d probably be heading out to a bar.

Instead, he pulls off his worn leather belt, toes off his shoes, tucking them under the side of the bed, and folds his jumper and shirt over his duffle bag. The charge point is in the corner by the door to the bathroom and he wanders over to finish getting ready for bed, wishing for a couple of beers to take the edge off his jittering nerves. There’s something about this town, something about this assignment that feels off. 

Sean is not somebody who usually ignores his gut instincts.

There’s a wavering single bar of signal when he plugs in his phone and rests it against the skirting board. He should still be able to hear his alarm from there, but if somebody from the team tries to call in the morning, they probably won’t be able to get through.

Sean sleeps a restless 6 hours, refuses to get out of bed, other than to grab his phone and start thumbing in some more notes, until the clock ticks over to 7am. He’s not meeting his contact until 9 and the email, when he manages to get it open to check, says that it’s less than a 30 minute drive to the farm from his ‘hotel’.

He doesn’t feel particularly enthusiastic about breakfast but he swallows down a few mouthfuls of lukewarm coffee and eats two slices of dry toast standing over the sink downstairs.

The taxi drops him at the opening of a dirt track barely visible and off to the side of Ilberton’s main road. The ‘two minutes up the way’ that the taxi driver, a different one from the day before, tells him as directions turns out to be a solid half-mile walk over rough, tractor trodden mud road. 

Sean takes a steadying breath once the farm building comes into view, the sign on the gate reads ‘Phillipe Farm’, with a smaller carved wooden sign staked into the ground proclaiming “Pyro Pickles and Jams” and a URL. Sean relaxes minutely. He’s in the right place.

He slings his satchel more securely over his shoulder and pushes the gate, expecting it to swing open easily and is surprised when it barely moves, rattling loudly. When he looks more closely, it’s chained shut. 

“Fucking…” Sean trails off without saying anything else, his voice loud and discordant in the quiet morning air.

The gate is framed on both sides by dense gorse bushes, but the gate itself is cast iron and at least 15 feet high which makes the choice for him. He takes a running leap at the leftmost bush, manages to dig his foot in and roll over the top without tearing anything or flattening the bush. He lands with a splash in a puddle of melted snow and it gushes over the top of his boots, soaking his socks. He curses again, wishes intently that he hadn’t agreed to this assignment and shakes his wet foot morosely before setting off again, every step squelching as he walks.

It only gets worse from there.

Sean was expecting a farm of this size to be bustling with people, especially considering the warning in the email he got about the fact that it’s the middle of jarring season and the contact might not have a lot of time to speak with him, yet there’s not a soul in sight.

The closer he gets the tenser he feels. The giant barn door is propped open slightly and Sean pauses to listen carefully. 

It’s silent. 

He pushes inside, his pen held tightly in his left hand. It’s dark inside, hot and sticky. It takes a moment for his eyes to adjust from the brightness outside.

He sees the blood first, pools of it on the dusty floor, more violent splatters up the left wall and across one of the vats that are spread evenly throughout the room. There’s an overturned table too, jars smashed on the floor. 

His eyes pan over the room as if in slow motion, and then they land on the...

That’s a body, he thinks with a stunned sort of calm. The young man is sprawled across the floor in a puddle of fresh blood. He has a red mark on his head where he’s been hit with something and his blonde hair is soaked through with blood. Sean takes a deep breath and steps closer, intent on checking for a pulse. He’s pretty sure he isn’t going to find one, not with all of that blood, or how pale the guy, the body, is.

A hand lands on Sean’s shoulder. 

He whirls around with a shriek, barely takes in the shape of the man standing behind him beyond the fact that he’s broad and has a thick beard and his hands are covered in blood. 

Sean’s pen comes down in a whirl of motion, sinking sharp tip first into the man’s upper arm, dislodging his grip. The man yells angrily and Sean stumbles backwards. 

He opens his mouth to shout for help. 

He regrets suddenly this whole thing; agreeing to come, not turning around when he first thought something wasn’t right, not running away the second he saw the blood and the body.

“Wait, wait, please.” The man with the beard says suddenly, face scrunched up in pain, but Sean keeps walking, tripping over his own feet in an effort to get away, stumbling around like a new-born giraffe. He puts space, and then some racks filled with jars, between them.

“Stay back!” Sean says, and the man holds up his left hand in appeasement, his right gripping his arm, fingers parted above and below where Sean’s pen is still sticking out of it.

“It’s okay, I’m Brandon. You’re the reporter right, from The Herald?” 

Sean’s stomach feels like it drops right out of his body and through the floor.

“How do you know who I am?” he demands and the guy hisses in pain, looking down at his arm.

“When Mary said you were vicious with a pen I didn’t think she meant literally.” 

Mary. The name rings a bell. Mary Phillipe, the face of the business, the little old lady they put on the labels of all the produce that comes out of Pyro Pickles. 

“I’m the owner,” the guy adds, opens his mouth to say more and is interrupted by a soft groan. 

Sean turns his head until he’s looking at the body again, except… except it isn’t just a body now, the guy is trying to sit up, hands slipping on the blood.

Except… Sean reaches out a finger and swipes some of the blood off the wall closest to him. He sniffs, then licks his finger tentatively. It tastes like raspberry.

“Oh my God, you’re not a serial killer.” Sean blurts, turning back to Brandon, Brandon the owner of Pyro Pickles, Brandon who Sean fucking stabbed. Oh God, Sean’s going to go to jail, he _stabbed_ somebody, you don’t get away with something like that.

“I…” Brandon looks surprised, but then he glances around at the raspberry-blood splattered walls, the overturned table and the guy reclining awkwardly on the floor with a purpling bruise on his face. His eyebrows climb down his forehead like caterpillars inching down a leaf, “Okay, I can see why you might think that. Look, I’m just going to go and help Dougie.” 

He starts stepping over all of the debris, pen still protruding horribly from his arm. Why he hasn’t just yanked it out yet Sean has no idea. He thinks about how much force he used to jam it in and for a second he actually thinks he’s going to throw up. Okay, so that’s probably why. 

Sean can feel his face start to flame with an embarrassed blush and he pulls himself up to sit on an available table before he falls down. This is officially the worst day of his life.

Yep, he thinks looking at Brandon kneeling gingerly next to the other guy, Dougie, and getting him to track the fingers of his arm not currently impaled with the pen Sean’s dad got him when he got promoted out of obits last month, this is the worst.

This is worse than his first day at the Herald, which he spent running around getting coffee for people. 

It’s worse than that time one of the guys at college convinced him to jump in the lake and he hit something and broke his leg in six places. 

It’s worse than the time Sean hit on a dude in a bar and then turned up to class the next day to find out that same guy, who he’d made out with in a dark corner for two hours, was his goddamn TA.

It’s worse than getting kicked out of college, and then all the times he’s had to explain why he was kicked out of college. 

This, the jumping to conclusions, then thinking the hunk of a guy gingerly feeling around the bruise on Dougie’s face was a murderer, then the stabbing of said hunk. This is hands-down the worst thing that has ever happened to him. He’s pretty sure it’ll hold that top spot until the day he dies.

He’s just starting to get over the woozy feeling and wondering if he should go offer his, practically non-existent though well rounded from Grey’s Anatomy marathons, medical help when 5 or 6 more people come busting in through the barn doors, followed closely behind a woman that Sean recognises as Mary Phillipe.

“Good God,” Mary says, taking in the scene, before turning to Dougie without pity and demanding, “What did you do?” Her accent is thickly Quebecois, strong enough that it makes Sean think fondly for a second of the 6-month internship he did in Gagnon. 

“I’m sorry Nana,” Dougie says mournfully, “I just, I thought maybe we could try a new stacking method, I worked out this algorithm for streamlining the process and I was just trying it and I slipped.” Mary frowns deeply. There’s an expectant pause before she speaks again, sharply enough that even Sean feels for the kid.

“And now look at the mess you have us all in.”

The rest of the staff are hovering sort of awkwardly, looking at Sean curiously but not daring to speak over Mary. 

“Well, has anybody phoned for an ambulance?” she demands, and everybody starts digging around for their phones at once. Sean stands up finally, feeling like he’s carrying a bag of rocks on his back, and mutely holds his phone out to Mary. 

She tuts. “Silly boy.” She curses him in Quebecois before switching back to English, “You think I can see that with these eyes? I’m 90 years old.” 

Sean’s pretty sure he doesn’t have any more blood left in his body to add to the flush in his face.

Brandon, Sean has no idea why, comes to his rescue. He pulls the phone from Sean’s limp hand and turns away from them all to make the call. That stupid pen is still there, sticking out of his arm at an angle, taunting Sean.

So, not only did he stab a guy today, he stabbed a guy who is insanely hot. That’s the part Sean’s trying to ignore, how broad and muscled Brandon is, how his neatly trimmed beard just makes his throat look delicate, how big his hands look around Sean’s phone. 

Sean wants, intently. Of course, since he stabbed him, Sean is definitely going to be eternally single and sad about it.

He’s probably going to die surrounded by cats and they won’t find his body until his fleshy bits have all been well nibbled.

Maybe Sean reads too many detective books, his imagination is clearly getting the better of his rational mind, and he’s a reporter, that’s actually a really bad thing.

The rest of the staff are gathered around Dougie, Mary having settled into a nearby chair when Brandon comes back to stand beside Sean and return his phone.

“I uh, I guess I’m not getting my interview then.” Sean says sadly, trying not to stare at the damn pen.

Brandon’s standing close enough that Sean can feel him start shaking. He looks up worriedly and the howl of laughter that bursts out of him takes Sean by surprise. There are tears rolling down his face. It goes on long enough that he starts gasping for breath, grabbing at his stomach as though it hurts. Every time it seems like he’s going to stop, he looks over at Sean and starts laughing again.

“I can’t believe you…” he manages to gasp between giggles. “You still want to write about us? When you thought I was going to kill you?”

“Well I don’t want to lose my job.” Sean says defensively. Which is only sort of true. He’s still not convinced that the soft reporting he’s doing for the food and local interest sections are that much of an upgrade from obituaries.

Sean stands with Brandon until the ambulance arrives. It takes almost 40 minutes, which is baffling for Sean, being a city boy. Brandon, after he’s recovered from the giggles, is pretty happy to talk about the business, mostly what they’re going to do with all the wasted raspberries, but, for a reason Sean can’t even begin to parse, he explains the workings of Pyro Pickles too.

Sean does get enough information to write his article.

He probably won’t mention the stabbing.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm so sorry.
> 
> [I'm @the_eighth_sin at Twitter ](http://www.twitter.com/the_eighth_sin), [ and here on Tumblr ](http://www.drinkingzaynsgatorade.tumblr.com)


End file.
